It’s that time of year again! Decibel has been banging our heads overtime to concoct our annual special issue with 100 percent never-before-seen content. Slip on your old studded vest and behold The Top 100 Old-School Metal Albums of All Time!

1980 could have been a disaster for Black Sabbath. They had recently parted ways with Ozzy Osbourne, their batshit crazy yet undeniably entertaining frontman, and drummer Bill Ward’s Hemingway-esque boozing was threatening his very ability to play. Instead of accepting their inevitable slide into obscurity, band masterminds Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler knuckled down and wrote eight songs that expressed a variety of new dynamics, textures, and emotions. Oh, and they recruited a little ol’ singer named Ronnie James motherfucking Dio, whose previous work with Elf and Rainbow had already cemented him as one of rock’s premier wailers.

The Sammy Hagar outfit encourages manscaping. I thought I’d get a head start on my Halloweening this weekend, so I began looking around the web for costume ideas. That, coupled with pumpkin beers and the Misfits discography, led me to seek out what America thinks qualifies as a heavy metal costume. The Dallas Costume Shop…

Randy Rhoads died 10 years before the official guitar tablature for Tribute found its way through my door, subsequently bogarting so many onanistic early-90s teenage years of practising guitar for the edification of no one save for the family spaniel. But the impact of his style—all neoclassical Ritchie Blackmore one minute and kinda like a…